Minelab Video - GPZ 7000 Gold Mode

[russ]

The two guys in the video are good friends of mine who are very passionate about metal detectors. Mark Lawrie on the right has spent considerable time with me in the field over the last few years and has found his fair share of nuggets along the way, Phil on the left is scarily bright (both guys are inhuman in this regard compared to my simple two dimensional brain), Phil did the main development work on the Gold Modes and also the Ground Balance Tracker, both of which still blow me away on how refined they are . I personally feel the Product Development guys having a say on the GPZ is a great idea as it gives people a further insight into the detector from the developers point of view, sure its a little stilted but the overall message is still extremely valid.

 

Putting anyone in front of a camera is daunting at the best of times, having them do it unscripted is testament to the amount of passion they have for the GPZ 7000.

 

JP

 

Mark is lucky to have to have someone like you to teach him about finding gold.

 

How did they come up with calling it the Extra Deep gold mode, I don't understand the thinking?

[flakmagnet]

JP glad you took a moment to clarify who those two gents are.

[Jonathan Porter]

I agree the naming of Extra Deep is confusing, Extra Deep will come into vogue when a larger coil becomes available. The mode has similar performance on large nuggets at depth to General but has less sensitivity to small gold and consequently also has less sensitivity to close to coil ground signal responses. This would suggest it goes "Extra Deep" on the larger pieces, especially in problematic ground where the saturation signal could mask a good target.

 

Hope this helps,

 

JP

[beatup]

Thanks for the make the distinction between those two settings a bit more clear.Steve & JP.

[Steve Herschbach]

Thanks is JP, the engineers and physicists! are the unsung heroes of the industry. I would rather spend time chatting with them about the GPZ than most anyone else. They really understand what is going on under the hood. I hope Minelab keeps them in front of the camera.

[wirelessguy]

Super informative and clarifying video and thread!   Helps me a ton.  Thanks Steve, JP and other contributors.   My own experience and tests in my environment (all in a hard quartz - mild ground - environment) also do not show benefits or uses for general and extra deep.   High Yield gives me a more definiitive response all my tests to date over general and extra deep.  And now I know why insofar as extra deep is concerned - I haven't tested in heavily mineralized ground.     Still learning!

 

Maybe I will find a useful strategy using these two gold modes for discerning different types of problematic hot rock I do encounter ???

 

A question:  In this video for the detectorist, when Phil uses the phrase "push the detector hard" does he mean "increase the transmit coil current (power)" if he were speaking in electrical engineering terms?    

[jasong]

Is there any chance these two guys could come on the forum and do a question/answer session about some technical aspects of the detector and settings?

 

In particular some kind of clarification on General mode would be great. From Minelab various sources we've now heard "5+ grams", then "medium to large", then now "a few ounces" regarding the point where General should be used over High Yield.

 

I understand every nugget is different and it's very difficult to quantify these sorts of things (the White Paper scatter plot data point spreads as a good example). But this 5g, medium to large, and a few ounces defintion is far to vague and broad for me to get any kind of meaning out of it.

 

But even in the white paper it seems that on average even on larger nuggets that High Yield is still outperforming General, or at least staying up with it despite wether the 5000 was in Normal or Fine Gold.

 

Since Phil comments in the video that General is "pushing the technology to it's limits" I am trying to understand this, seems like we should see something more definitive in the results.

 

Also, I'd be very curious to hear wether there will be the ability to add on via software updates, additional timings or other features into the programming. A slider for audio smoothing comes to mind. I have a whole slew of them which aren't really relevant to this gold mode thread but I'd love to ask.

[Norvic]

JP`s mention he is two dimensional in his thinking is probably where I am, the technical side of how detectors work is way beyond me. They work and get gold, they are reliable and have made my life what it is in some respects. That is until this thread, the video shows Minelabs passion for their products, shows the human side of why their products lead the world. It is not just their tech abilities it is their enthusiasm to deliver.

Way off subject I read Stephen Hawkins fairly easy to understand books on relativity etc, which gives some of an idea how our GPS`s work,  plus a lot of other tech, that helps in the field as does  Geo`s like Ian Plimers writings on the formation of the earth, mineral deposits etc. Minelabs video does the same thing, communicating in a manner that is easier and interesting for the layperson to understand. Tis top stuff, gets the grey matter working and importantly adds positive thoughts that keep you going in those gold lean times as I am finding this forum does.

[Jonathan Porter]

Is there any chance these two guys could come on the forum and do a question/answer session about some technical aspects of the detector and settings?

 

In particular some kind of clarification on General mode would be great. From Minelab various sources we've now heard "5+ grams", then "medium to large", then now "a few ounces" regarding the point where General should be used over High Yield.

 

I understand every nugget is different and it's very difficult to quantify these sorts of things (the White Paper scatter plot data point spreads as a good example). But this 5g, medium to large, and a few ounces defintion is far to vague and broad for me to get any kind of meaning out of it.

 

But even in the white paper it seems that on average even on larger nuggets that High Yield is still outperforming General, or at least staying up with it despite wether the 5000 was in Normal or Fine Gold.

 

Since Phil comments in the video that General is "pushing the technology to it's limits" I am trying to understand this, seems like we should see something more definitive in the results.

 

Also, I'd be very curious to hear wether there will be the ability to add on via software updates, additional timings or other features into the programming. A slider for audio smoothing comes to mind. I have a whole slew of them which aren't really relevant to this gold mode thread but I'd love to ask.

 

Phil is right about pushing the envelope with the General Gold mode both in Normal and Difficult, the Go To mode for outright GPZ performance is General. However the Go To mode for the regular finding of gold with the GPZ 7000 will be the High Yield Gold mode as it livens up those nuggets that previous PI machines have missed especially the Fast Time Constant ones, those nugget sizes are more plentiful so will be targeted more often.

 

High Yield offers up superior performance on nuggets up to 15 grams or finely disseminated gold specimens or roughly shaped nuggets, this is very dependent on ground signal response as High Yield can generate more target masking ground noise especially in the Normal Ground Type mode. The sweet spot for High Yield/Difficult compared to General/Difficult for nuggets at depth is around the 8 to 10 gram mark with a marked increase in signal strength, however generally, everything from that size down using High Yield has a much stronger signal strength but obliviously depth decreases proportionally as the size decreases.

 

In a nut shell, each and every target is unique to the transmit/receive of the GPZ particularly when using High Yield, however if you want outright performance/depth on larger gold sizes then General is the far better option, this also will become more apparent when a larger coil becomes available.

 

JP

[Steve Herschbach]

The main problem is trying to equate the weight of a nugget with the time constant of a nugget. People want to think in terms of weight ranges when metal detectors do not detect weight. The correlation between time constant and weight is loose at best. A large specimen with ounces of dispersed low purity gold will be much harder to detect than a solid lump of purer gold weighing half as much.